Alistair McCartney: THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK

April 19, 2008

Tim Miller met Alistair McCartney around the same time I met Daniel. The four of us met in Palm Springs in fall 1994. I have always been a big fan of Tim Miller, and it has been thrilling to get to know Alistair. We’re going to a book launch at Highways on April 27 for his new book. Here is all the info about The End of the World Book and a cool video to boot.

The End of The World Book
By: Alistair McCartney
Spoken Text: Alistair McCartney
Directed by: Ian MacKinnon

“If I’ve read a more deeply impressive, beautiful, sweeping, mindful, and innovative first novel than Alistair McCartney’s The End of the World Book, I have no memory of it. McCartney is a writer of peerless, brilliant originality and pure, giant talent.”
—Dennis Cooper, author of The Sluts and God Jr.

http://alistairmccartney.blogspot.com/
ALISTAIR McCARTNEY – THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK

Alistair McCartney is the author of THE END OF THE WORLD BOOK published in March 2008 by University of Wisconson Press. This is no ordinary novel. An encyclopedia of memory—from A to Z—The End of the World Book deftly intertwines fiction, memoir, and cultural history. Born in Perth, Western Australia, in 1971, his writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Fence, Bloom, James White Review, and other literary journals, as well as in a number of fiction and creative nonfiction anthologies, including Wonderlands: Good Gay Travel Writing (University of Wisconsin Press) and Between Men (Carroll and Graf.) He lives in Los Angeles with his partner Tim Miller and teaches creative writing and literature in the BA Program at Antioch University Los Angeles and Antioch Santa Barbara.

The End of the World Book
A Novel by
Alistair McCartney

This is no ordinary novel. An encyclopedia of memory—from A to Z—The End of the World Book deftly intertwines fiction, memoir, and cultural history, reimagining the story of the world and one man’s life as they both hurtle toward a frightening future. Alistair McCartney’s alphabetical guide to the apocalypse layers images like a prose poem, building from Aristotle to da Vinci, hip-hop to lederhosen, plagues to zippers, while barreling from antiquity to the present.

In this profound book about mortality, McCartney composes an irreverent archive of philosophical obsessions and homoerotic fixations, demonstrating the difficulty of separating what is real from what is imagined.

“If I’ve read a more deeply impressive, beautiful, sweeping, mindful, and innovative first novel than Alistair McCartney’s The End of the World Book, I have no memory of it. McCartney is a writer of peerless, brilliant originality and pure, giant talent.”
—Dennis Cooper, author of The Sluts and God Jr.

“The End of the World Book is in turn informative, playful, erotic, imaginary, witty, perverse, charming, autobiographical, and full of wonders; the letter K, for example, begins with Kafka and ends with Freddie Krueger. If the world is ending soon, I recommend you read it while there’s still time.”
—Jim Krusoe, author of Iceland and Blood Lake

“Beguiling, comical, earnest, and wise beyond its author’s years. Crossing sporadic bursts of linear narrative with a detailed taxonomy of altercation, McCartney has engineered a compelling compendium of integrated distractions, somewhat in the manner of Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Read it from A to Z. He knows who you are: you will be quizzed.”
—James McCourt, author of Mawrdew Czgowchwz and Queer Street